RCTS
Britain’s leading Railway Society
The RCTS: then and now
DURING the early to mid-1950s, the planning departments of the Southern Region were busy looking ahead to what would replace steam-hauled passenger services, which was by then a real possibility a few years later. As documented by The Railway Observer at the time, dieselisation was well underway across the regions, but the Southern was to benefit more from electrification.
The Kent Coast electrification scheme was one of the first that saw the deployment of purpose-built EMUs constructed to aBR Mk.1 design. These were known as CEP and BEP units, formed into four-car sets to a maximum of 12 coaches, usually with the BEP in the middle of the train (the ‘B’standing for buffet).